


Honeymoon

by Anima Nightmate (faithhope)



Series: All For One and, well, you know the rest... [10]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Blasphemy, Bottom!D'Artagnan, Canon Era, Canon couple, Consent, Cunnilingus, Deepthroating, Did I mention teasing?, Dominance, Enthusiastic Consent, Explicit Consent, F/M, Femdom, Honeymoon, Humour, Imagination, Light Dom/sub, Mild D/s, Multiple Orgasms, Orgasm, Orgasm Control, Penis In Vagina Sex, Spoilers for s02e10, Strip Tease, Synaesthesia, Teasing, Top!Constance, Verbal Bondage, Woman on Top, deepthroating (attempted), so much fucking teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-07 00:07:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15206474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithhope/pseuds/Anima%20Nightmate
Summary: Are you going to carry me across the threshold?” Her voice is rich with amusement.“No,” he decides. “I’ve not stolen you from anyone. Besides,” he adds, “this isn’t our home. I’ll do it when… after… if you want…”“It’s all right.” She lays her hand on his arm, then slips it down to hold his hand. “Come on.”And, of course, he thinks, a corner of his mouth lifting,she leads the way.***This is d’Artagnan and Constance’s cruelly truncated honeymoon – a couple of hours’ grace between wedding and war. Last night, filled to the brim with victory, they spent some timeplaying drinking gameswith the other Inseparables, whereupon they were tricked into revealing something of the full extent of their relationship with Athos. Which connection they all three went on to celebrate in style and vigour in Constance’s suite at the Palace, unaware that battle was about to cut all their plans short.





	1. Entrance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The players assemble

Are you going to carry me across the threshold?” Her voice is rich with amusement.

“No,” he decides. “I’ve not stolen you from anyone. Besides,” he adds, “this isn’t our home. I’ll do it when… after… if you want…”

“It’s all right.” She lays her hand on his arm, then slips it down to hold his hand. “Come on.”

 _And, of course_ , he thinks, a corner of his mouth lifting, _she leads the way_.

He is feeling… he shakes his head. Too many things, really. And in among the regret, and joy, and relief, and sorrow, and trepidation, is a species of triumphant excitement, a feeling of coming home at last. It’s the most treacherous of them and he won’t tell her, he thinks, because how can you tell someone, someone like Constance, that you feel like you’re coming home… to war?

He suspects it’s somehow childish. He doesn’t care.

These next couple of hours are Constance’s, he reminds himself. Him and Constance – together at last in the way they have always been meant to be. If only for a short while.

 _Stealing time again_ , she thinks, as they pause halfway between the door and the bed, look at each other. Every day she’ll pray for a swift end to – she takes a tight breath on the thought – the war, though she knows it’s unlikely, and a swift return, unharmed (though not unchanged, she’s not so naïve), a chance to build something real together. He quirks that famous, copper-bright smile at her, eyes glittering, still a little tired from last night, and bows his head, keeping his gaze on hers. “Madame d’Artagnan?” he says, in sly imitation of Treville, the first to call her this. Her answering smile is as sly and as bright.

“Monsieur,” she says, bobbing, pert as a robin, eyes fixing his with as much strength.

“Oh, Constance,” he breathes, steps forward to dip, claim her mouth with his. Her hands go up his back, warm and firm. He seems keen to move slowly, and after last night she can hardly blame him, as she strokes his hair back with both hands, cupping his face and revelling in the smoothness of hair and lips, the contrast with the mild stubble around his mouth where, apparently, he has not this time been persuaded to shave close for the sake of marital harmony.

This leads her thoughts to Aramis. She feels her eyes close in sadness at that news, at the knowledge she’d never got to bid him farewell properly, the last glance of him a careful watch over the soothe and bounce of the King-fretted Dauphin.

And then she has to push regret from her mind, much as she imagines d’Artagnan himself is doing.

This time is theirs, and only theirs, no matter how short. No matter the clang of muster in the yard below them, bustle and clatter ringing through the open window. _Ours_ , she thinks, fiercely, and pulls him closer, rising on her toes, drawing her palms down his back and around his ribs as he sighs against her, hums and sways lightly.

Their kiss deepens, still slow, still with the air of relishing every stretched second. His tongue sweeps over hers and she moans lightly. He feels his scalp and spine prickle at the sound, pulls her closer again, lets his hands roam, stroking and kneading, feeling her heat and eddy against him. God, this is delicious.

He finally moves from her mouth, nuzzling soft presses across her cheek and down her neck, hearing and feeling her breath go in on a rush. Her fingers hook and swirl across his shoulders, neck, and head, and he feels her pulse pick up a notch, grins against her flushing skin.

As his mouth goes lower her head rocks back, summoning last night, unbidden, the pair of them sundering her from sound breath, lips and tongues on her. She’s remembering as well the first time d’Artagnan’s tongue swirled down her neck, edged past her collarbone, hesitant and yet unable to stop himself, both of them drowning in sensation and _want_. His lips now trace her décolleté, or as much as can be reached in this modest gown, maddeningly restrained, and she clutches at his shirt.

His fingers clench at her waist and her head rocks forward again on a moan, eyes shooting open.

Wait.

“Er, d’Artagnan?”

“Mmhyes, my love?” He barely pauses.

“Why do you have a chamber pot full of flowers on your shelf?”

That stops him. She feels his brows contract against her. His face rises and he stares at her, follows the line of her sight with a swift twist of his neck and returns on a shake of head to rest on her shoulder.

“I hadn’t spotted that one,” he mutters.

Her turn to frown. “ _That_ one?”

He straightens up, mouth wry. “Porthos and Aramis. While we were away last night they stayed up drinking and… at some point they did some redecorating. I mean, it can only have been them.” He takes a step back and his arm spreads a ‘what would you’ palm wide around the place.

Each surface apart from the floor or the bed, taut as a drum, is graced with unlit candles. Decent ones, she notes.

“I take it you’re not normally this spendthrift with light…?”

“I have to hope that the Quartermaster will be too busy to search our rooms if… _when_ he notices the shortfall.”

She imagines the place mellow and flickering after nightfall, and smiles despite herself.

“Yeah,” he says, softly, “I couldn’t stay vexed, even with the sconce.” He gestures.

“It isn’t yours?” 

“I doubt it was Porthos’s either.” 

She nods. Of course, Porthos’s past having gifted him his famously skilled fingers. Her mind already set in that direction anyway, she reflects that d’Artagnan hasn’t spoken to the same women as she has, won’t know why she’s halfway to blushing to think of what they’ve told her. She clears her throat, asks: “Anything else?”

“Well, they seem to have done something to the bed. I haven’t had a chance to check it yet. I guess we’ll find out any other changes as we go.” 

“I’ve never been here before,” she reminds him, gently.

“Well,” he amends, “I’ll let you know.”

“Hopefully I’ll keep you sufficiently distracted.” 

“Is that so, Madame?” 

“Oh yes, Monsieur,” she assures him. And, holding his gaze firmly with her own, she reaches up to pull out the bow securing the laces of her stomacher, the other hand shooting forward to his chest to brake him as he darts forward.

She shakes her head slowly, one eyebrow quirking, watches the flush mottle upwards from his heaving chest. “Take that doublet off,” she says, peremptory and warm together. Blinking rapidly, he complies, and, to her amusement, goes to hang it neatly on a hook. “ _And_ the weapons belt.” He gives a small chuff of amused breath, shoulders hunching briefly, then works the buckles hurriedly, laying it neatly on the floor under the doublet. He returns to stand in almost exactly the same spot, two paces away, hands behind his back, in parade rest stance. She remembers, all too vividly, Athos binding him in a similar position while they teased him until he dripped, impossibly hard, near-fainting before they relented. Bound him with a word and a curl of tone.

“Oh, you’re a well-trained pup, aren’t you?” she croons, almost embarrassing herself before she sees what an effect it has on him. He’s positively _quivering_. And she grins, hard and hot at him, holding up a palm and saying: “Stay there. Stay and watch for a little until I let you go.”

His eyebrows go high in the middle and she remembers – it’s like the fairytales of old: you have to set terms on such magic. Her smile slides to something gentler as she says, a little softer: “You may speak, and you can ask to be released, but you can’t move from that spot until I say so.”

He nods. Closes his eyes on a smile, then opens them in a rush of breath as she commands: “Eyes on me, Gascon.”

She reaches up again to undo the main knot, shifts her chest and shoulders back and forth as she loosens the stays, until she can part the front, and give thought to how slowly she dares slide… wait.

He watches in a delighted species of disbelief as she very deliberately plucks her hand from her corsetry and moves slowly to her wrist, twitching and tugging until the quarter-sleeve cuff slides off the full sleeve past the heel of her hand. For a moment he envisages her in leathers, the quarter-sleeves wrist-bracers on her bare arms, her hair bound like a hunter’s, fierce and upright, quiver at her back. It’s an arresting image. He sighs happily, feeling himself heat another notch as she bites her lip unthinkingly, brows drawn and focused on the other quarter-sleeve, which she eventually lifts high between her fingertips, eyes bold on his, and lets drop to the floor.

Now she loosens the stays at her front a further crucial degree, so that the fabric drops to sit on her hips more firmly, and then twists to undo the ties for the outer skirts, one side at a time. Now back to the front, which she loosens again another notch or so, then shakes herself like a Moorish dancer, arms held high, grinning as it falls down to puddle about her feet, leaving the more diaphanous than usual undergown clinging in soft folds around her. This neckline is rather lower, and she watches his eyes follow the dress down, sweep up, then drop again as he wets his lips and looks up once more to her face, biting lightly.

“Oh, Constance…”

“Yes, d’Artagnan?”

“You are _so_ beautiful.”

“Tell me more.”

“The way your eyes sparkle, the curve of your cheeks when you grin so wickedly with that beautiful mouth. The way your arms are all strength and softness combined. The, the _wealth_ of your hair, how it tumbles, those russet curls all wayward and wonderful. Would you please take your hair down, Constance, so I can see it?”

“And here,” she says, as dry as she can, trying to hide how _utterly_ disarmed she is by this, “I thought that Aramis was the poet…”

“I could learn,” he says, suddenly absurdly shy, “if you wanted…”

She grins outright at this. “Only if _you_ wanted.”

“I might wait until I’m retired, then, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Just keep surprising me with bursts of it like this in the meantime?”

“I like surprising you,” he says, eyes darkening.

“Oh yes?”

“Yes. You flush all over, if I do it right.”

“I see…”

She reaches up and starts to remove the pins from her hair. He shuffles in place, clearly longing to reach out to her. Let’s see if we can’t make it much _harder_ for him…

She unhitches and lifts the flowers away, drops them to lie on the gown. She then removes and tosses each further pin one by one to the dresser, shakes her hair out and runs her fingers through it, watches his brows quirk in that delighted, delightful twist that is all d’Artagnan.

“What next, I wonder,” she says, all exaggerated thought. “Shoes,” she decides, stepping out of the pool of gown and flowers, sliding back to the bed to perch and flick one knee across the other, kicking high so she can lean forward and remove one, with care, then repeating the performance on the other side.

The dropping shoe clanks oddly and she peeps down to see it’s knocked a bottle, of all things… oh, a dust-smeared bottle of… right… lying on its side. By the bed.

Dismissing it, she looks up to see d’Artagnan, face a mess of several emotions, gazing at her. She folds the hem of her shift upwards in a slow series of tiny creases, revealing her stockings, which she bends forward again to stroke upwards, laying her fingers on the bow at the top.

“Oh, Constance…”

“Yes, my love?” She starts to unlace herself.

He swallows, and it sounds dry. “Please…”

“‘Please’…?”

She gazes at him, pantomiming puzzlement, then lets her brow clear theatrically. “Ohhh. You want to help me with _this_ …”

“Oh God, yes…”

“Then tell me. And tell me _why_.”

Dear Jesu, he’s right – she’s _such_ a fast learner. He gazes, mouth dry, lips working foolishly, until she shoots him a comic look of impatience and disappointment and he comes undone in a rush.

“I want to help you shed your stockings,” he says, “because… because I need to kneel to do it; because I love how you used to watch me closely, and how you trust me now to do it right. Oh. Mmh. Because I’m… a silk’s width from your skin, but not yet touching it, and I love to feel the texture change between the fabric and your thigh as I, as my knuckles brush there while I undo the ties. I love. I love how close I am to… to your quim,” and he feels the word burn, deliciously hot in his mouth, gasps a little against it, “how I can smell your arousal, feel the heat of your desire, but not yet touch. How my mouth waters, near and yet… not touching, not tasting, and I’m… mh, I’m _stoking_ myself with the thought of it. I love… the, the slight constraint.” He gestures, grasping at a curved shape in the air. “You tie yourself into your stockings like they were a corset, and your flesh spills, _wells_ just ever so slightly over the top of the garter, and –”

“That’s,” she says, and he’s pleased to hear how breathless she is, to watch the aforementioned flush spread up her, “very good. Well done.” And he can’t help but spot that her fingers are stroking at the very top of the fabric, touching that join, and he feels the strength tremble away from his legs, just a little. She notices his wobble, smiles wickedly and says, all considering tone, head to one side: “Yes, I think that will do. D’Artagnan?”

“Yes, Constance?” And God, but his voice sounds breathy, _needy_. And fuck, does he not care.

“I release you. Come here and help me, husband.”

“Oh God, yes. Thank you.” Shaking his head at his own eagerness, he restrains himself to a measured walk, then kneels very slowly in front of her, showing off, seeing her mouth go just a little slack, her eyes darken at the sight of his control and strength. She reaches and takes his hands, draws them up to kiss the fingertips, then lays them on the first set of ties. He leans forward to kiss her just above the fabric, hears her breath hiss in, feels the heat of her, wonders, for a blood-deafening second, whether she’ll consent to being fucked with them still on, imagines the textured slide around his hips as he rocks and plunges, nips her a little, almost absent-mindedly, as he slips the first ties free. Her throat lets out a tiny, gorgeous sound like a choked-off whimper, and he just _has_ to hear it again, so, after a lightning look at her face, dips to the revealed flesh as he pushes the fabric down with an aching slowness. He kisses, nips, deliberately rubs his stubbled chin against her satin skin, lays broad, wet strokes of his tongue over it immediately after each prickling caress as he follows the stocking down. His reward is a gush of heat and scent, more tiny, bubbling moans.

Oh God, he’s being so slow, so thorough, so… so _textured_ , the wonderful bastard. It’s almost like… She closes her eyes on the realisation. Here are the fruits of Athos’s influence, right here – d’Artagnan has finally learned, of all things, patience. _Inventive_ patience.

There must be a way to pay Athos back. Once, _ah_ , _instep!_ _lips!_ she gets her brain back, that is.

He places the first stocking on the pile of cloth, then switches to the other leg, unable to fail to notice her hopeful shuffle and involuntary rock of hips towards him, the sound from her throat that’s closer to a growl. Smirking, just a touch, he removes this one with only a little more alacrity, but keeps his mouth high on her thigh as his fingers move down. The scent of her is intoxicating, and her linen already looks to be soaked. He peels the stocking off more or less by touch, only breaking from her to cast it onto the growing mound of white fabric, then runs both thumbs up her thighs, pushing at the legs of her underwear.

“D’Artagnan?” Her voice is an edged kind of sweet.

“Yes, Constance?”

“If my underwear doesn’t come off in the next half-minute, there’ll be trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Me making you watch while I bring myself…”

The thought is vivid enough to clutch him, hot and breathless, and his hands slip as they go momentarily nerveless. “Oh, I’d _like_ that, though…”

“Me getting someone else in to finish the job, then…”

He feels his breath grow thick. “I might like _that_ , though…”

“Someone _other_ than–”

“Dammit, wife!”

“Get on with it, husband!”

With a sober focus that drops through her, heavy and warm, he slides his hands back up to the legs of her underwear, runs his thumbs under each cuff across her inner thighs, hears her throat gather another unbidden sound, finds his fingers clutching in the material beyond his volition. “Stand up, then,” he says, voice only trembling slightly.

As soon as her weight shifts sufficiently he’s tugging at ties and fabric, and she’s flexing and wriggling to help, shift held high, kicking swiftly, and then he’s chucking them… somewhere… and diving up to meet her with a sigh like coming home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you haven’t read some of the preceding stories, Aramis and Porthos stayed up to [tell tales](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14616350), and then [spent some time in d’Artagnan’s room](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14695800)…


	2. Engagement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens.

It’s been… she calculates… not much more than twelve hours since d’Artagnan last took his mouth to her, and yet – as ever – he lays tongue and lips against her like a man starving. Even with this new slowness weighting and smoothing every movement between them, nothing can temper the sounds he makes and that evidence of appetite goes straight to her core, tightening her against him in the sweetest fashion.

He licks a broad, sure stripe up her, barely dipping between her folds, teasing himself as much as her, the shock of that familiar scent going right to the core of him, as ever. His brain, slippery with desire, shows him how she looks from a different angle, Athos’s tongue the one caressing her, and he gasps against her, feels himself swell another notch, focuses fiercely and hears her gasp in answer.

She weighs up the merits of holding back her climax or pushing for it and decides, with a strange, surrendering serenity, to just let whatever happens happen, acting – as d’Artagnan is – as though they have all the time in the world. One day they will. One day they’ll shut themselves in a room with food and wine and a massive bed for maybe two… three days… and re-emerge only when they’ve run out of everything.

Of course, they may need an armed guard outside it to prevent people interrupting, but it’s worth considering.

She rocks gently, a sway like a dancing surge of water. She has never seen the sea – _and that will change_ , she swears to herself – but she has heard stories, remembers a crackle of firelight beneath one tale in particular, has seen pictures, for that matter, and actors billowing blue, green, grey, and white ripples and froths of fabric across a stage. She thinks this must be how the sea is, a swell and sink, each rise a little higher, a little…

_Oh…_

He hums against her, no longer able to resist moving deeper, feeling his own desire swell past a critical point, a ball of heat in his gut. She’s surging and swaying, sighing like a forest in high winds and now arching to meet him, fingers combing over his hair, sounds from the back of her throat increasing in pitch and volume. The window’s open, he thinks, abruptly amused, and proud, and then absolutely with her, seizing her hips, riding those rising, battering swells as wordless alleluias spill from her.

Yet again she finds herself flooded by and translated into images that touch her body with trailing textures. Later she will explain it to herself as taxed nerves and lack of sleep, and a slew of emotions spanning every extreme in the past few days. Later still it will be a sweet, bright, gauzy memory she tries to strike out towards in darker, deeper times.

For now she is washed and buffeted, and dragged under for a gorgeous, breath-stealing, immeasurable moment of fracturing light.

He rises to his feet slowly, wipes his lower face reflexively with his hand, shaking slightly, he notices. He’s not sure whether he should move her yet, but figures, either way, that this is a good time to pull off his boots.

When he looks up, she’s smiling, that hooded, wicked smile that suggests that she’s reasonably sated, but with capacity for much more, and that how the next round of this goes is entirely dependent on his stamina… She sits up in a rush and reaches for him. He lets himself be grabbed, his shirt pulled free, and his points undone at a deliberate speed that has him gritting his teeth as she bends forward to nuzzle his belly.

She kisses his points down, then reaches in to pull him free without taking off his breeches, and her evident hunger goes right to the pit of him. Looking up, she wets her lips, then slowly circles the head of his cock with her tongue, drawing a sound very like a whimper from his throat. He clutches at the front of his shirt, pulling it higher, out of the way.

“Tell me,” she murmurs, then lays soft, tiny kisses around where she’s licked, looking up again to catch his gaze.

“Er, tell…” he swallows, forces his pitch lower again, “tell you what?”

“The secret…” She gives him that Constance smirk, tongue caught between her teeth, then licks at him again.

“Augh. Oh, God, _what_ secret? You know _everything_.” Doesn’t she?

“The secret to taking you deep.”

“Oh! Oh fuck. Oh. Er.”

She twinkles up at him, all mischievous eagerness, hands reaching to swiftly knot the sides of her hair back out of her face. He is torn, hardening to the image of pushing deep inside her and all that would mean, to know what Athos feels when he does this for him. He closes his eyes, tilts his head back, honour warring with sheer lust.

“It,” he clears his throat, staring at the wall behind her, “it took me… they spent… Mm. It was a good hour at least. The… the training.” He risks a look down. Her eyes are very wide and she is not longer quite smiling. “No, no,” he says rapidly, gesticulating. “I didn’t. I. Oh, Christ. I just watched, and,” slowing again, “um… they had me practice with, um… a, er,” he rushes, quieter: “a peeled cucumber…”

She smirks then, as he reddens, sniggers irrepressibly. “Who knew we had so much in common, husband?”

He feels his embarrassment start to ebb a little, remembering her confession of the previous night – relieving some of her tension during her previous marriage by means of a cucumber she subsequently served up to her husband’s family. He has no further details than that, but it is quite enough.

“We can, um, we can try some, a bit, if you like…?” She nods. Looks down. He follows her gaze. “That’s probably a good thing – makes it a little easier.”

Her lips quirk briefly, then she dips to lift his now only half-hard shaft towards her lips, and he tries to remember the best of the advice given to him, but his mind is flailing, slippery, and all he can remember is the sensation the first time he took Athos deep, heard him rattle with shocked arousal, from deep in his chest. “Steady,” he tells her, “make me, mmh, make it nice and wwet all… mmh, yes…”

She licks all around him, alternating between loose, wet kisses and strokes of her tongue. “Now slowly,” he says, hearing his voice tremble, “bring me inside you… oh…” This is no good – he’s hardening far too rapidly for this to work for her and. And oh _fuck_ , the fact that she’s trying is. Oh _God_.

Think, think, _think_ , for God’s sake – think of… nothing is coming to mind except the rhythmic wash of her against him as she massages with the middle of her tongue, heading deeper and deeper.

“Don’t push yourself too far, just. Just relax. Um.” He looks down to see her darting an amused glance up at him. What else, what else…?

“Lean, er… lean forward a little. You need to, ah, mmh, you need to,” he closes his eyes, desperately trying to distance himself, “to straighten your throat if you c-can.”

Athos can’t do this at all. The one time he tried, he made horrendous noises that he never wants to hear again; his eyes watered and he backed off quickly, swearing and apologising and looking as though he was going to throw up.

He wishes he hadn’t thought of that. Of all bloody things.

“Just relax,” he says again, his voice anything but. He can feel himself wilting a little further, knows that there’s every possibility that she’ll take that as critique of herself, which thought in turn makes it worse.

She withdraws, looks up at him, concerned. “Am I doing this wrong?”

“Oh God, no. It’s, it’s me. I’m.” He smiles, awkwardly. “I’m thinking too much.”

“Oh no!” she exclaims, all theatrical dismay, and he relaxes somewhat. This isn’t going to be a complete disaster. His smile eases out a little, and she smiles back, all dimples and cheeky eyebrows.

“Let’s um. Let’s–” he flails.

She nods, all businesslike. Moves back from the edge of the bed and swings her legs up, scoots over, pats the mattress next to her. “Come on,” she says.

“Breeches off or…?”

She bites her lip before she can prevent it, thinks: _don’t say “For Heaven’s sake, d’Artagnan!”, no matter how much you want to_ , does her best to turn it into an alluring, or at least comforting smile. “Which would you prefer?”

“Off,” he says, decisively, on a rush of relief. That done, along with his hose, and – remarkably – tidied away, he then reaches, almost involuntarily, she thinks, to pull the sheets and blanket back. She scrambles off the other side of the bed to help, noting that Porthos and Aramis have done a great job of tucking them in tight enough that you could bounce things off it, should you be of a mind. Between them they wrench and chuckle them loose and slide beneath them.

He sighs and lies back, one arm beside his head. He looks a little melancholy, she thinks, his eyes distant. “One of these days,” he says, addressing the ceiling. “One of these nights, even, we’ll be in a bed we don’t have to leave. Not for… not for… not until _midday_.”

“Not for _days_ …” she draws the word out, luxuriantly, cuddling into him, feeling his other arm – thank God – go about her shoulder.

He smiles again, finally, though it’s brief, but at least he’s looking at her now, curled along his side, fingers playing with his shirt. He strokes at her sleeve with the hand behind her, absently. 

“You deserve more lavish surroundings for your honeymoon.”

_Oh_ , she thinks – _here it is._

“Most men would have taken their bride to some rural idyll somepl–”

She cuts across him, hand caressing his ribs. “I didn't marry _most men_.” He looks at her, confused, with a small smile starting on him. “I married a _Musketeer_.” He gasps comically for happy realisation. She chuckles, strums his lip, gives him a tongue-poking grin, and leans to capture his mouth as his hand comes up to cup her cheek.

He’s still somewhat reserved, though his kisses are starting to warm a little, clutching her hand to his chest as she rises, tries to bring him with her, feeling herself stirring. She’s not quite sure exactly what she’s going to do if he continues to be this… this _whiny_ …

She scolds herself for lack of charity. _Come on, Constance_.

“I don’t even know,” he says, “which side you prefer to sleep. We’ve never… not properly…”

_Setting aside the night after Châtillon_ , she thinks. Instead, she flashes her eyes at him deliberately, cocks one brow, leans and points. “There,” over the far side of his body, sends a _what are you going to do about it?_ look and, saints be praised, the spark finally catches again in him, and he seizes her about the waist and pulls her across him as he shifts, to tumble with a squeal to the other side, facing away. She feels his hand reach out to draw broad warmth down her back between her shoulderblades and she deliberately heels down the thought of how Anne writhes so sweetly when stroked just there, burying her face in the bedding, thinking: _d’Artagnan, d’Artagnan_.

Thanks to those two idiots, the sheets are fresh, so they won’t smell of him yet, but still, there’s a definite– She sniffs cautiously. Surely not…

“D’Artagnan…” she ventures, slowly, thinking of that bottle of oil.

“Yes, my love?” His hand keeps stroking.

“Did… do you and Athos ever… here…?”

He laughs. “Dear God, no – he’s obsessed with the secrecy, the security of the thing. Except now… well… don’t know if that’s changed since last night… God knows what it’s cost us in…” He pauses. “Why?”

Your bed smells awfully like seed just here. No. Surely that’s my imagination.

_It isn’t._

“And, um, do you ever… by yourself…?”

“Constance!” his tone is somewhere between delighted and scandalised. “What’s this? You want to know what depravity’s been enacted between these sheets?”

“Well, I do _now_ …!” She turns over, twinkling, reaching an arm across to pull him close and into a kiss.

“Mmhyou, you want to, mmh, to hear me tell you about, mmmh, _oh_ , the times I’ve, ah, I’ve taken my hand to myself in-nnh in thought of you? Here?”

“Or in thought of _him_ ,” she returns.

“Ohoho,” he says, Porthos-like but softer, brushing fingers gently across her temple. “And has he told _you_ about any of that?”

“What do you m–?”

“About _his_ solo activities…? He doesn’t tell me. I know you spent time together – not like _that_ , but… when… when… after Bonacieux.” _And before_ , she thinks. Is this _jealousy?_ Surely not… Not from d’Artagnan, of all people.

No, it isn’t, she decides, but there’s an edge to his teasing. She decides on simplicity.

“He wanted you so badly before you found him,” she says, softly, “that it felt like a sickness.”

His eyes widen, and he breathes an “Oh.”

“You didn’t know?”

He shakes his head.

“He kept it all inside, of course, but blamed himself, worried he’d… _corrupted_ you.”

“Dear God.” He rolls to his back, clearly deep in thought. “Does he still think this?”

“I don’t know. Maybe?”

“Would it help if I told him that he wasn’t the first?” He turns to her earnestly. She chokes as she realises what he means, what he _must_ mean, just as it’s on the tip of her tongue to say something trite and witty, which is lost with her breath.

“I’d, er, never considered…” she says slowly, trying each word as she lays it down in front of her.

“What, because I’m a nice Gascon boy from the sticks…?”

“Er. Partly?” she admits.

He smirks.

“Oh!” she exclaims. “You _can’t_ just leave it there!”

“Ow!” She’s thumped him harder than she thought. “Now, Constance,” he says, holding her by the wrists and squirming away, “shouldn’t we try to retain some, _ah!_ mystery between us?”

She throws her leg across him, twists, and rises up to pin him with thighs and hips. His face drops instantly, colour mounting in a stuttered breath. His hands go slack, and she slips free to prop herself on his chest. She grinds against him, very deliberately, and his eyes roll. She feels him hardening rapidly beneath her, her own breath catching as she swells in response. She reaches and, as slowly as she dares, bends his arms back so she can pin him in turn by the wrists, weight forward to hold him there.

His moans are high-pitched now, a desperation of desire. _And of course_ , she thinks, _this is why Athos does it_. He bucks against her. _God, that’s delicious_.

“Keep still,” she orders, almost without thought. She can feel him quivering from it – wire-tight and humming again with the specific arousal that comes with his ready submission.

The front of her shift is caught up between her legs, and she draws it through slowly, knowing it must be sliding tight against his hardness, even his balls, she thinks, with a moue of wicked glee as his eyes roll back again and he becomes a bridge-taut, shallow bow for a moment, hissing inwards through clenched teeth.

Material clear, she pulls it over her head and casts it to join the pile of wedding finery.

“Now, d’Artagnan,” she says, very deliberately, head cocked to one side, “I think there may be a forfeit owing, you know.” He opens his eyes on an honestly puzzled squint and twist of brows. “In fact, the more I think of it,” and she lends warm, wet weight directly against him until he moans, teeth clenching again, “the more I’m certain of it.” She nods a _go on…_ look his way.

“Wh–” she presses, and his throat closes. She stops, he clears it, and tries again. “What do I o-owe a forfeit for, Constance?”

“Well, it seems like you’ve told me a falsehood. And on my wedding day too!”

“I…”

Before he can get too upset, she says, voice comically deepened, accent shifted South: “‘What secret? You know _everything!_ ’”

“Oh. _Oh!_ ” She nods, lips flattened, eyebrow cocked. “Damn.”

“Indeed,” she sighs, in her own voice. “What’s a woman to do with such a knave…?”

His eyebrows rise, and she can see his mind spinning possibilities.

“If only we had more time,” they chorus, then giggle.

“If we did,” she said, “what kind of forfeit came slipping into that bad brain of yours?”

“Um…”

“The very first,” she commands, whip-crack, and he answers, almost without volition, choking out:

“Rope!” on a kind of half-whisper.

“Oh…” she says, softly. “You bound?”

“Yes,” he whimpers.

She leans forward. “Unable to move,” she murmurs.

“Mmh.” He’s like a bar of hot metal beneath her.

“Take that shirt off,” she orders, leaning back.

“Yes,” he says, scrambling as close to half-upright as he can, his muscles straining beneath her. He heaves it over his head desperately, then yanks his arms out, peeling the sleeves inside-out and leaving it to lie beneath him.

She shakes her head and tuts, reaches and tugs it from beneath him, which changes her angle and his as well, memories of the previous night arrowing into… both of them, it would appear, despite their best endeavours: her sheathing him to the hilt as Athos strummed them with his tongue and fingers, and those desperate sounds and half-words she still isn’t sure whether he knows he makes. The same note is summoned from both their chests and their eyes meet as she throws the shirt with a hard, heedless cast that later she’ll thank several saints didn’t happen with all those candles lit.

They ask with their eyes, nod, shift, groan, him, oh, notching, catching, her pivoting against her hands on his chest to bear down just enough and oh, Christ, _yes_. She holds herself still to feel him pushing into her because, oh, because it’s _magnificent_. And then she’s tilting and pushing back onto him and it’s almost too much, _almost._ A little too deep and him so hard when she’s not been massaged into readiness, but mmh, but slowly, hissing a little…

And she has it.

“Stay still,” she says, and he stares at her in a wild species of disbelief. “You can speak, but _I_ ’m going to move, use you,” he whimpers, “to get myself ready and then…”

“Mmh?”

“You’re going to fuck me hard, d’Artagnan, until I climax and if,” she pants, and his fingers tighten on her hips to a bruising intensity she knows she’ll feel tomorrow, “ _if_ I’m satisfied, I _might_ let you come too.”

“Oh, _fuck!_ ”


	3. Development

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solo and chorus

He is searing hot already, partway inside her, and she knows this may be one of the worst – meaning the best – punishments she could devise, stretching his already strained, new patience to _self_ -restraint, while simultaneously lifting responsibility from him.

She’ll be astonished if either of them last long, in all honesty. She can feel herself tighten on the thought of what’s to come, and it wrings a groan from him she swears she can feel inside her.

She raises her eyebrows. “Yes?”

“Y-yes?”

“Do you concede?”

“Oh _God_ , Constance, _yes_.” He nearly adds, explicitly: _use me_ , knows, somehow, that neither of them are ready to hear that out loud, takes his hands from her hips as a further sign of surrender, lays them, palm-up, at his sides.

He whimpers as, eyes closed, she leans a little more of her weight on his chest, pulls up a touch, then presses with her hips – then a series of tiny movements that he grits his teeth to realise are her trying to find the exact angle to get, uh, God, the head of mmh, of his cock against that part just inside her… tightness.

He thinks, unbidden, of the harder curve of Athos, how that felt inside him from below last night, face-to-face for the first time, then, further, how it might be inside _her_ , pressing _there_ , her gasping to tell him how it feels in filthy detail, the sounds she might make when words died, how they’d look, oh _fuck yes_ , together, rocking and groaning…

A sharp pain on his chest snaps open eyes he didn’t even realise were closed, “ _Ah!_ ” to see her glaring down at him, imperious, fingers in a vicious twist about his left nipple.

“Focus, Musketeer,” she demands, hard-eyed, as he forces his hips to subside, “or I’ll get someone in with better discipline.”

This is all too close to his imaginings for comfort, but he takes the point, nodding silently, considers making a quip about not shooting his weapon too soon, thinks better of it.

Musket practice. Right. She release the pressure of her fingers, rides back on him a little, sighing, then up, almost completely off again.

In his mind he holds the musket, hears Aramis’s voice telling him that, before he learns to shoot it, he must learn the anatomy of it; instructing him on the best way to disassemble it, the best order to take it apart. Each element is laid out carefully on a clean cloth – separate, sacred, each piece as important as the rest.

“Mmh,” she murmurs. “Oh, that’s–”

Porthos argues with Aramis over which part to start cleaning first. _You’re too nice about this – it’s not some holy bloody ritual_.

 _Oh, but it_ is _, brother_ , replies the poet. _Either everything is sacred or nothing is_.

 _Nevertheless_ , grumbles the other: _the best thing to do is just to get started_.

“Constance?”

“Mmh?” Her breath is coming shorter, and his momentary focus reveals that she is deeper, warmer, looser, ohdearGod _wetter_ , around him. He catches himself on a tilt of his own hips, eases down on a narrowed outbreath, trying to relax all his muscles, imagines sinking into the bed.

“May I touch you?”

“Mmh?” That flush is spreading hectically from her chest up her throat and laying its fingers on her cheeks, down across her belly. She opens her eyes, dark and glittering. _Oh, Jesu._

“With my h-hands,” he manages.

“Mmh,” her smile warm and wicked. “Oh, _yes_ …”

He lifts the abrasive cloth and picks up the bolt, starts to work it over slowly and thoroughly, mindful of any shifts in texture.

He runs his hands up her belly to her breasts, cups and lifts, then brings his thumb and trigger finger in to roll her nipples. She gasps into an appreciative chuckle, sinks a little lower.

Focus.

 _Now the oil_ , says Aramis. He dutifully dips a smoother cloth in the gun oil laid out for him in a shallow dish and pays attention to how well-saturated the cloth is with the oil – not just a surface moisture.

He lifts his right hand to his mouth, puts his thumb to it, swipes it with his tongue then, on seeing her eyes on him, makes it more of a performance, pushing the digit in a little deeper, bit by bit, making sure she can see the swirl of his tongue as he holds her gaze, watches her expression slacken, feels everything heat just a little further, lifting his lips away to show her his teeth grazing his skin lightly.

Aramis makes an approving sound. Porthos gives a hard kind of chuckle. _Get on with it_ , he says. Smiling slightly, he starts to smooth the oil-sodden cloth over the metal, which catches a gleam. It is a familiar rhythm of almost soothing precision.

He reaches out, splays his fingers over her thigh and hip for stability and starts a spit-slick series of strokes just above her nub. The groan she lets out confirms that she is ready for this.

Aramis tells him to polish in circles and spirals, not just in straight lines. _I know_ , he tells him, still smiling. Porthos, peering close over Aramis’s shoulder, nudges the monk-to-be, fingers tightening on his waist, says: _see?_

 _I see_ , says Aramis, softly.

 _It’s getting a bit weird_ , he says, _you two watching me. Do you mind?_

Porthos grins, cheek bunching against the side of Aramis’s gentle smile. _Not at all. Be our guest_ , they say.

 _Right_.

Right.

Constance sinks to encompass him completely, and their groans mesh. “Oh fuck,” she moans. “Oh, _fuck_ , _yes_.” He moves to gently touch her directly, circling slowly, and she keens and tightens briefly on him, starts to rock.

In a sudden rush of strange excitement he realises that this is another thing she has never experienced before. He adds pressure almost without volition, to further moans from them both. The thought that it’s him alone bringing her this joy nearly undoes him.

 _Well_ , says Milady, _not_ entirely _alone…_

 _Hush_ , he tells her. She fades backwards from view, smile and eyes glimmering to the last and, somewhere nearby, Aramis and Porthos are still standing, companionably close.

Constance’s hands slide on him – one up to touch his face, cup his cheek, the other down to his belly and then to their joining, as if she wants more evidence of it. He remembers the first few times they were together – her fingers exploring in wonder at the place where his entered her.

Oh. Oh dear God. Quick. Er. Stables. Care of horses. Er. Manure. No. No, that’s a bit too far, what if I…? Right.

“D’Artagnan?”

“Yes?” He’s pleased with how steady his voice is, considering.

“Mmmh,” and her fingers, dear Jesu, are joining his, spreading their mingled moisture, then taking it up to her mouth to taste on a rock of her head that ripples down her body.

“Constance?” His voice is tight.

“I need you to fuck me now.”

“Oh God.”

“Hard.”

“Oh, oh _Jesu!_ ” And he does, raising his knees and pistoning upwards, slow and heavy, digging his heels in, clinging to her hips as leverage, while she starts to let loose extraordinary sounds, expression completely abandoned, her own hips rocking in smaller arcs but at twice the pace until he thinks he’ll go mad from it.

And then she’s holding herself still for him to fuck upwards into her, as he speeds and slams, gripping her hips, her growling “fu _ckiNG_ _YES!_ ” modulating into something like a scream as she pulses and clenches around him, one hand in her own hair, the other clutching a breast, and everything is bound into keeping himself together, keeping… staying, don’t, oh _God_ don’t.

 _Breathe through it_ , Aramis is soothing. _Just breathe. That’s it_. Porthos grunts, sniffs, says: _You’ve got this, mate_. And a familiar hand lands on his shoulder, Athos saying, in That Voice: _You don’t have permission_ , and those sea-coloured eyes bore into his, hands reaching up through his hair to tug it tight at the back. _Auh!_ he responds, body clenching wire-cold, biting his lip, steel running through his bones.

It’s okay. He doesn’t have permission yet. The thing’s locked up, impossible.

He beams up at her, bright-eyed. She is flushed to the ends of her fingertips and her hair is wonderfully, unmistakably wild as she sways unsteadily.

“I’ve got you,” he says, sliding his hands higher up her sides, his knees up to prop her at the back. “Right here, I’ve got you.”

“Mmmh,” she says, voice blurred, approaching a chuckle, wiping her hands over her face. “I’ll say. I’ll say you do at that.”

“ _Nothing for you to be gawping at, Lambert!_ ” roars Porthos in the sudden quiet of the yard. “ _Get on with it!_ ”

They snort and giggle as the various clangs, clatters, and thumps rise up to a fervently renewed rhythm, and _bustle_ encompasses the space vehemently.

She shifts, squeezes, murmurs something like “I wondered.” She gazes down, focus still misty, raises an eyebrow. “You haven’t–”

He shakes his head, cutting across her quietly: “No.” He’s pretty sure he looks somewhere between smug and awed, which would be a fair reflection of his feelings. He is increasingly aware of how he _aches_ now. And though he’s loath to examine his feelings too closely, he’s almost proud of it, this badge of his endurance.

Her mouth quirks. “What a _good_ boy!” And delicious shame curls through him in a wriggle. “Would you like to?” she asks in a drunken-sounding stage whisper.

He feels his face drop, brows rise, eyelids stutter. “Oh, _God…_ ”

Her voice drops, sharpens: “Don’t ask Him – this is in _my_ hands, Gascon.”

Real shock rings through him. He gazes up and she cocks a look down at him that’s hard to read, lays a commanding palm on his breastbone. Then she _squeezes_ , harder this time, and he reaches up to her, supplicant. “Please.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh God, _please_ , Constance.” She looks at him, unsmiling. “I. I want to come, Constance. Please.”

“Oh. Oh, d’Artagnan.” Her own face drops open and she bites her lip. He’s so exquisitely sensitive now that he’d actually felt it the moment _before_ her expression changed. Then he sees her stomach muscles start to tense – she’s entering the aftershock, or maybe just starting to come again at the thought. “Oh yes,” she manages. “Yes, please come. Pl–” she pulses, rocking against him, moaning helplessly. “I want you to, I–” and then her words dissolve into a flood of quivering sounds.

He thrusts and groans, immediately lost in the conflagration, reaching out for her as she reaches to him, leaning, messy, kissing, moaning into and against each other as he surges into the final ascent. And then his head goes back, body a high arc as he comes hard, shouting, sobbing, feeling it ring through him like… Later he will describe it as being akin to cannonade – all earth-shock and sanity-scrambling noise; panic and victory and one long roar… But for now all senses blend and rejoice and grip and let go, let go, let go.

When he returns to himself she is curled, collapsed on him, and he is still inside her, both of them radiating heat and a boneless kind of content.

“ _Do you want to be on stable duty, Lambert?!_ ” comes ringing through the window on the unmistakable tones of Treville. They raise their heads, gaze, smirk loose kisses, and start to rearrange themselves.

He thinks he has never felt anything quite so bittersweet as the physical reality of that withdrawal, knowing it will be the last time in who knows how long. By the look on her face, the same feeling is going through her.


	4. Exeunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our players leave the stage and enter the arena.

This isn’t the hardest thing she’s ever done. Not even in the top five this year. She feels her eyes slide to one side in reminiscence as she climbs off d’Artagnan and pauses for a moment against the footboard to scrape her hair, now completely loose again, out of her face and get her legs untangled. It’s been quite the year. Her mind flashes through: breaking off her affair with d’Artagnan; dragging the Queen’s mouth to her own; the technical kidnapping of the Dauphin; telling a madman at point blank range to go ahead and shoot; and walking to the executioner’s block. It would be tempting to think that life will be quieter without the Musketeers around, but she’s fairly sure that she can find her own adventures these days.

Where was she? Oh yes, climbing off the bed. It’s not even in the top _ten_ , but it’s the thing right in front of her and… it’s undeniably hard.

She is setting foot – wobbly foot, let’s take another moment, Constance – on a path that will lead to loneliness and learning how not to fret, and a great deal of writing of letters, she’ll be bound.

She feels a familiar slide inside her and reflexively clenches, squeezing her thighs together. “Do you, uh…?”

“Hmm?” he says, hooded eyes clearly fighting sleepiness.

“A clean washcloth?”

“Oh. Er, dresser.” He points to the belly-high bank of drawers with basin and ewer (and black metal sconce) atop it. “Top, um, right, I think.”

She hops off the bed, more steady now, heads over and starts rifling. It’s as crazy a mash of fabrics as she would have imagined, including braies she knows he only wears in winter, or occasionally for longer rides, if he remembers. She finds a clean cloth, and uses some water to make herself a little nicer again. Part of her relishes this – the intimacy of the act, the easy pragmatism, even, perversely, the reminder of why it’s necessary. Another part – increasingly quieter, more distant, less vitally Constance these days, whines softly about how mortifying this is. She smiles slightly, shakes her head in a less-than-fond farewell to it.

D’Artagnan’s mirror turns out to be little more than a square of polished metal, clearly bought with travel in mind. It’s not ideal, but gives her a (fuzzy, incomplete) notion of how she looks. It’s not detailed enough to allow her to put her hair up into anything other than either a simple braid by feel or…

Sod it. “How does my hair look, d’Artagnan?”

“You’re still naked.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“It looks wonderful.” He clearly means this very sincerely.

“Will it pass muster?”

“Here? Yes. At the Palace…?” He seesaws his hand. He is still reclined on the bed, one leg canted, one hand still behind his head. He looks immeasurably content, and she can’t help but smile.

“Ah. Well, I’ll deal with that later.”

“Aramis has a proper… Oh.”

“Hmm.”

“Or the bathhouse…?”

She can’t help but smirk. “I can’t think any Musketeers in there right now would be too pleased to see a woman.”

“Or all too pleased…”

“Either way.”

“You look lovely.” 

“Thank you. Where are my linens?”

“Um…”

This finally moves him to sit upright. She allows herself a wry smile for the thought that, even with this delay, he is likely to be fully dressed long before she is. She also spares a small, reminiscent roll of eyes for her far more practical outfit of the previous couple of days, wonders if she’ll ever have a chance to wear something like that again.

Wait. She’ll _give_ herself the chance.

“I know that look,” says d’Artagnan.

“Hmm?”

“Means someone’s in trouble and they don’t know it yet.”

“Probably me, at this rate. Have you found them?”

“I think you might be standing on them…”

“Oh.” She is. “Good.” He smirks. She steps into them.

His frown is smiling. “Where’s my shirt?”

Now it’s her turn to twist chagrin. “Er – somewhere over…” she points, “ah.”

His eyebrow raises. “That was a good throw!”

“And then some.” She picks up her shift from the rather more convenient pile of the rest of her finery, and starts to put everything back on, in approximate reverse order of removal, as he retrieves his shirt.

He then turns back, shirt tails billowing against his thighs, points. “May I?”

“Oh.” She has her stockings in her hand. She smiles. “By all means.”

She sits on the edge of the bed as directed, and lifts, points, holds as he instructs, enjoying this small reversal for once, unable to prevent herself watching him carefully as he gathers the stocking into a tight circle to roll it up her leg. She doesn’t want to be walking on wrinkles for the rest of the day, after all. He smooths the fabric on, at exactly the right tension, lays a kiss just above her knee before tying the ribbons over it. She feels her breath huff out as an entirely inconvenient tingle trickles up and over her.

The next is replaced just as punctiliously, just as reverently, but the kiss placed rather higher, and her fingers glide through his hair for a clutching moment before he rises, a soft look of apology on him.

Her lips flatten and she nods. “Of course,” she says. “And thank you.”

He rises, goes to find his own hose.

Sighing, she puts her shoes on, disassembles the outer dress, and pulls on the main part. She takes the mirror and tries to prop it next to the chamber pot on the shelf, to give herself a higher view.

“Hold on…”

“What?”

He turns to find her holding out a large handful of what looks to be wax pieces, already softening in her hand. He frowns.

“I know you’ve got some extras now, but are you _missing_ any candles…?”

He curses. “This is just like them,” he mutters, feeling absurd for it in the next breath, and dives down beside the bed to where his most recent reading candle waits… waited.

“Apparently so.” They frown at each other. “Wait.” She waits. “It’s on the floor?” He points to where it, or something like it, stands, close to the bed, much shorter than before.

“So. Hold on. They burned a candle on your shelf long enough to produce this much wax, then scraped it off and replaced it with a chamber pot of flowers, and about a dozen other candles, but without bothering to remove the leftovers?”

“Looks like.”

She is crushing and moulding it together, almost absent-mindedly. “That… doesn’t make any sense.”

“They will have been very drunk, I expect. Did we ever tell you about the birthday melon?”

“Melon…?!” Her mind is reeling. He tells her, in a choppy series of highlights while tugging the rest of his clothes on. “Oh.”

“Right?”

“Yes – I can see how sense might be… optional…” She looks down at her hands – she now has a small ball of softened wax. Well. She pulls it into two parts and uses them to secure the corners of the mirror, leaning it a little so that she can check the symmetry of her dress. She twitches and wriggles as she pulls the ties tight. Good enough.

Doublet on, he tightens the first of his belts about it, and immediately begins to feel different. He is now further towards Musketeer than lover, than husband, and he feels the briefest kind of mourning at that. He looks over at her, glad that her back is turned, knowing that his too-open face will be proclaiming all his guilt and excitement (is this pride?) right now.

He has rarely watched her dress. Even this morning, when there was a little time for once, after cleaning up, she’d herded him and Athos out, reminding them that someone would be gathering her to dress the Queen soon and before that she must be immaculate herself, go on, bugger off and get smart yourselves.

He’s abruptly thankful that they’ve so far walked everywhere today, giving him time to recover. The small, sweet ache the memory summons causes him to stir a little, hose sliding on the boards as his feet rearrange themselves.

Her voice cuts across his thoughts. “Have you ever…?” she asks, determinedly casual-sounding, engaged in retying her skirts.

He steps up behind her, lays his hands on her waist, bends to kiss where her neck is revealed through the curls falling down either side of her lowered head. “What…?” He feels her soften back against him a little, broadens his kiss then lays another one to overlap it, down towards her shoulder.

“Hmm,” she says, sounding warmer now. “Your forfeit.”

“Hmm?” His brain ticks through to… “Oh.”

“Rope,” she says, drawing the r out, roughening her voice a little, and it’s as if he feels the friction of it moving through her hands, across his skin, heating him, the mild sting of the tar-hard p.

“Er. No. Not, er, like… um. No.” They both flash to Châtillon, the long cord between them.

“Ooh,” she says, softly. “And am I first to know this?”

“Well,” he says, “I mean, _I_ barely knew it until now, if that makes sense?”

She nods.

“I suspect Athos has guessed. Or, you know, it’s a, um, a logical progression. I suppose.” His face is nigh-on burning now. “He’s not. He doesn’t say–”

“Well, no,” she says. “Except when he does.”

“Hah. Yes.”

“Well,” she says, in a considering tone. “Let’s leave it for the moment – something to explore later, maybe.” Her hands rebusy themselves at her hip.

“Hmm,” and if his voice is a little higher than usual, she says nothing, just lets her own little hum of consideration and pleasure murmur in her throat for a moment.

“Or something for you to explore with him and tell me about.”

A hot-and-cold shock goes through him. “Constance…” he says, a slow and wary, shifting note.

“D’Artagnan.” She turns, tied to her satisfaction, looks up at him very seriously. “I don’t want you to… to be without comfort while you’re away. I love you,” she says, still very focused, “which means that I want you to be as happy as possible while you’re far from me, especially if it means that…” She doesn’t know how to say it. She knows that men – and women, for that matter – do more desperate things in misery and frustration than they do in content. “I just want you to be safe,” is what she lands on, eventually. “You know – as much as possible.”

“Which means allowing Athos to tie me up and…” It’s no good – he’s tried to say it with a lightly ironic tone, but the all-too-vivid images conjured trip his tongue.

“And…?”

“Lord save me,” he confesses, “I hadn’t thought much further than that. If you could call it thought,” he adds in a mutter.

She chuckles at this, lays a palm against his cheek with a dimpling smile up at him. “Oh, husband,” she sighs, “you are in _so_ much trouble.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” he returns. “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself otherwise.”

She pulls him down for a kiss. “Get your boots on,” she says. “It’s past time.”

As he’s sitting on the bed, pulling them on, he has a question of his own: “While I’m away…”

“Yes?”

“Will you… I mean, will there be comfort for you…?”

“Say what’s on your mind, please, d’Artagnan.”

He huffs a short breath. “The Queen. Do you. I mean. Mm. Are you…?”

She sighs herself. “Honestly? I don’t know.”

“But last night…”

“Hm. Well, that was a special occasion, really.”

“Oh?”

“Not every day a person escapes from death. And I was more… _offering_ comfort than receiving…”

“Poor lady,” he says, suddenly, looking up and into the distance beyond her. She can see honest compassion ringing through him.

“Not everyone,” she replies, softly, “can be as blessed in their husbands as I am…”

His eyes focus, warm and soft on hers. “Or as blessed as I in my wife.”

She dimples back at him.

“Surely only a fool would leave such a blessing behind,” he muses.

“Best get cracking, Gascon,” she quips, “for I won’t be married to any fool for long.”

He smiles, but his eyes are narrow. “Foolishness can be tempered with learning,” he returns, slowly.

“Study how to win a war, then, and come home safe and soon. You and your captain both,” she adds, partly to watch his reaction.

It is complex, swift, warm, and startled, she thinks. But in the end, he just looks up at her and says: “It’s past time, really,” and she knows he means his… _their_ lover’s promotion.

They are silent for a while, checking the various elements of clothing and equipment that need to sit right, looking up to catch each other’s fuss and nervous concern with a smile.

“I don’t want to leave this room,” she confesses, with a small attempt at smiling, and he gives a slight nod, a compassionate press of lips, but they both know that part of him is already striding towards his brothers, stretching shoulders out into the wider air.

There are still things she wants to say, questions to ask, and now… now they can no longer whistle against urgency. She’ll have to choose what can be sent with him and what must stay and wait the time.

Dimples deepen across her as she decides, and he cocks his head to one side in query at it, not quite as absent, yet, as she’d supposed.

“It occurs to me,” she says, twinkling, “that a good wife should pack her husband off to war with a gift…”

He smiles, though suitably cautiously, given all that’s occurred this last good hour or so. “Oh yes?”

“But it should be something easy to carry.”

“Ah…?”

“And a gift that benefits as many people as possible…”

“What’s in your head?”

Her twinkle deepens. “This is something that would be a gift for both you _and_ Athos.”

“Go on…?”

She steps close, draws his head down, whispers in his ear.

He draws back, stares at her. “ _Really?!_ ”

“Mmmh.”

“I suppose that makes sense, but how did…?”

“Just an observation. Pretty sure I’m right, though.”

“Oh my…” he drawls, in imitation of their noble lover, eyes on a distant scene. “You know,” in his own voice, "Aramis once told me that people often do to you what they wish done to themselves…”

She considers this. “Food for thought there.” _And I should take you in my mouth more often, then._

His gaze snaps back to hers. “I should find out when his birthday is.”

“Good luck,” she returns, drily.

“Hmm. Well,” he says, mouth and brows canted every which way in delight, “we’ll just have to make the occasion.”

“You _must_ ,” she tells him, “write to me and tell me how he takes to it.”

“You wouldn’t want to w–”

“My name’s Constance, not Patience,” she reminds him. “Besides, if it does work, I’ll expect a demonstration.”

She’s never going to tire of watching him blush. She hopes, more fervently than she would have imagined, if asked, that war doesn’t harden him into someone who won’t anymore. Either way: she relishes this heated moment, his drifting eyes darkening at what they see, his breath catching shallow, his gaze returning to her, along with his mouth, warm, and already a farewell kind of tender.

She feels tears begin to prick behind her eyes for the first time since walking up the aisle with Athos, his arm and hand warm and solid under hers, seeing d’Artagnan – her d’Artagnan, in the light, at last – waiting, turning, smiling. She fights them back, schools herself not to grab at him – don’t make yourselves both feel worse, because. Because there’s no helping this, no stopping this. All you control is how you leave.

How well you say goodbye.

His hands come up to hold her shoulders, and it’s all he can do not to squeeze hard, fingers digging in, anchoring himself to this point in time, never letting go, never. Because. Because no. Because he chose this life as much at it chose him and he has to answer it, longs, if he’s honest, to do so, even while he thinks his heart will tear in two being pulled like this.

And then he thinks: if there’s room enough in my heart for two strong people, there’s room enough in it for battle and hearth alike, and he opens his eyes on that thought to see her, the sweep of her eyelashes a beautiful fan against her cheek, and then her own open and he can’t look away, can’t.

She pulls back, right hand up to cup his face, left reaching across to touch his hand on her shoulder. They gaze and gaze and then, like dancers, take one step back.

It’s time.

One deep breath and he’s crossing to where his blade lies, guns already outside, being looked over by the experts, along with everyone else’s.

He picks up his sword in his left hand, turns to her, and she takes his right.

“Let’s go,” she says, words like a weight lifted to the chest. She tries to smile but.

Well.

He nods – swift upward acknowledgement as to any other soldier and that helps more than, possibly, he could ever know.

And so she leads him from the room, and into war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been another unexpectedly wild ride for me. “Write a swift one-off about the two hour ‘honeymoon’ of the d’Artagnans – simple and fun and sweet.”
> 
> I think we’ve adequately established that I do neither short, nor simple, nor an untrammeled kind of sweet. And even this attempt at writing entirely heterosexual erotica failed to be vanilla or even, frankly, entirely heterosexual. _Oh well!_ ☺
> 
> Hope you’ve enjoyed it at least as much as I have. There is a _waaaaay_ longer WIP on its way that I have to decide when to start posting because, dear friends, it’s another epic, and recently led me down the rabbithole of research that is “Okay Google, tell me about Seventeenth Century dildos”… Also some other deceptively simple “one-offs” which are all flashbacks (one of which is a response to a prompt from one of you, so look out for that).*
> 
> I’m doomed. But then, so are the rest of you, if you carry on this journey with me…
> 
> Love always, to you all, and big thanks, as ever, to the usual suspects: theredwagon, Thimblerig, and Lady_Neve, without whose impassioned (and occasionally deliciously snarky) comments, I’d’ve long since given up, I’m sure…
> 
> AN
> 
> *Updates are bound to become a deal more erratic for the next month or so: I’ll be in Edinburgh for most of August as my alter ego struts and frets on various stages, telling tales, performing poems, and singing songs.


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